by Brad Wardell

For years we've watched the media player wars. AOL's Winamp vs. Microsoft Media Player. In fact, there's been a whole whole of really cool skinnable media players over the years. And they all have one thing in common - they are very very difficult to create skins for. Even simple skins for Windows Media Player or WinAmp modern involve a considerable amount of coding. And then when you're done, it's just a skin that only works if the person has the right version of the media player installed.

What if there was another way? There is now. DesktopX 3. With DesktopX 3 you can easily create your own MP3 players (along with pretty much anything else). You don't even have to know how to code to make them. It's just a matter of assigning the buttons and text and other elements with your images. And if you have DesktopX PRO you can export your creations as stand-alone programs. In the example pictured, that player is 500K - and it's a stand alone media player that can be assigned to work on its own or remote control Media Player, Winamp, or iTunes too.

To see how it's done, here's a 7 minute, 41 second video demo of how to create a media player from scratch and export it -- the whole process takes only a few minutes.

Example: Make your own MP3 player (Windows Media Player format (.WMV)).